Lou Christie, the pop singer who indeed had lightning strike in a big way with his “Lightnin’ Strikes” smash in the 1960s, died Wednesday at 82, his family announced on social media. No date or cause of death was given.
Christie had three top 10 singles in the U.S. across a period of six years in the ’60s, the biggest being “Lightnin’ Strikes,” which was released in 1965 and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1966. Written by Christie with Twyla Herbert, the MGM-label single was famous for a soaring hook with a nearly Frankie Valli-level falsetto.
That career peak was preceded in 1963 with “Two Faces Have I,” which reached No. 6. Also written by Christie and Herbert, the song was not often covered, yet Bruce Springsteen acknowledged it as an inspiration for his song “Two Faces” almost a quarter-century later.
Christie closed out his run in the top 10 in 1969 with “I’m Gonna Make You Mine,” which made it to No. 10 in the U.S., while doing better in the U.K., peaking at No. 2 there.
But although it did not quite crack the top 10, Christie was also notorious for the No. 16 single “Rhapsody in the Rain,” which was banned by some radio stations in 1966 for its risque intimations of what teenagers might be doing in an automobile on a rainy night, finding more favor when Christie re-recorded some lyric in a “clean” version that dropped the line “In this car, our love went much too far.”
The man pop fans knew as Lou Christie was born Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco on Feb. 19, 1943. He met his long-term songwriting collaborator Herbert when he was just 15 and she was 20 years older, and their partnership took off. As a high schooler in suburban Pittsburgh, he even had a local hit with a group called Lugee & the Lions, which included Herbert’s daughter.
It was in 1962 that he was convinced by a manager to take on a stage name, and his first single under that name, “The Gypsy Cried,” came out that year, eventually reaching No. 24 and selling a million records after Morris Levy and Roulette picked it up.
Christie believed he was pulling up the rear in the age of teen idols. “They started disappearing. It was so interesting that I kept going,” he said in an interview with classicbands.com. “I hit the end of that whole era. I’ve always been between the cracks of rock ‘n’ roll, I felt. The missing link…. We had the teenage idols. We had Frankie Avalon. We had Fabian. That thing was just about closing down when a lot of my records started hitting. … They all disappeared, but my records kept going through that English Invasion. … I remember we were on tour and Paul and Paula had just come back from England and they said there’s a group over there called the Beatles… That was pretty much the end of the people I was traveling around the country with. We were in teen magazines together. We were sort of the cat’s meow there for all those years as being teenage idols, teenage princes and princesses.”
Christie toured with Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars tour and others like it. “I was sitting on the bus with Diana Ross. She was sitting on the seat next to me. She and I were bus buddies. I always put it that way…. Here I was, sitting next to all those people who, six months ago I bought their records and watched them on American Bandstand. Now, all of a sudden I’m one of them. … I was with Gene Pitney and Johnny Tillotson, the Supremes, Paul and Paula, the Crystals, the Ronettes, Fabian, Frankie Avalon. To me, this was my graduating class and still is today.”
After his chart success ran out, Christie tried country music, and one song in that vein, “Beyond the Blue Horizon,” went top 20 on the AC chart. He continued recording into the 2010s and did concert appearances on the oldies circuit for decades.